I've argued this with my girlfriend, time and time again. "Why do I have to learn the command line? I'm fine, I can do everything without it," she says before something breaks. I honestly sometimes shake my head and sigh when I hear those types of things. I can understand being impatient, but that doesn't mean that you should neglect learning a tool that is apart of your system. You didn't neglect learning how to use an internet browser right? I mean, you managed to get on the computer somehow, don't tell me you didn't have to at least try a few times to learn how to use the windows and your mouse.
I'm here, arguing five of my best reasons for learning the CLI, A.K.A. Command Line Interface.
5. If you don't like being patient, then you should hurry up and learn it then. This logic makes sense, because with Linux, if you don't know what you're doing you're more likely to spend more time with a problem if something breaks. Failing to Google for answers, nagging someone else who knows what they're doing for help, or even just being a little help-vampire all over the boards. In fact, you might become so frustrated that you abandon Linux and Unix operating systems altogether to settle for an even slower, buggier Windows.
The reason why open-source is better than closed-source is because if something breaks on your open-source system, you're more likely to find lots of documentation, lots of help, and maybe even lots of other people with the same problem as you're having which actually urges developers to work faster to fix the bug. In addition to that statement, sometimes, with Arch [I don't know about the other Distro communities], you'll see that users will band together and use their accumulated knowledge to solve problems that they have with their systems. Even though sometimes it can be a bit rough out there, it's not so much impoliteness as it's just getting to the point.
4. People don't always want to have to solve your problems for you. I mean, the hacker mind-set is that problems can be fun and that everything is broken and needs fixing, but that doesn't mean that they want to help you with the same problem that many other people, somewhere on the internet, have already learned because you're too stubborn to learn something as basic as "tar -jxvf *.tar.bz2". Mind you, it's not bad to ask questions and to seek answers from someone else, but it's bad to actively seek someone to just magically pop up and give you the answer instead of reading a small bit of Documentation all the time. It doesn't work that way, and it isn't fair to those around you.
3. Your system will have less bloat because you'll have apps that won't require a GUI wrapper to function. This is another perfectly logical reason for why you should learn to use the CLI. For example, my girlfriend will go as far as to go to YouTube to find a song, get a Firefox plugin, and then use the plugin and have it download and convert the file to mp3 [of all things] for her.She could have accomplished the searching with three, very simple commands and would have more time to do whatever she wanted while it downloaded in the background, reducing the occasional lag in her system.
Try this, open up a file manager, and open up something like xterm, and then tell me how much of a delay you feel. To see a tutorial on how to navigate and see your files in the CLI, check out my developing tutorial series.
2. Once you learn, you're hooked. The both cool and weird thing about using the terminal is that it becomes a habit of a kind that you won't want to break. Another personal experience that I had while learning the command line, was that once I had gotten my new computer, Windows had become too painful of an experience for me to want to keep for any extended period of time. I just had to get virtual-box and say good riddance! It came to me that I had to literally click on the explorer icon each time in order to navigate my folders. I couldn't change most of the colours to something darker for my light sensitive eyes, and there wasn't even a keyboard shortcut! So I had to feel like a retard every time I pressed ^T (Ctrl-T) and didn't get anything at all! It was so annoying that I wiped my drive and threw Arch on there as soon as was possible, and I didn't even have a dedicated internet connection which just goes to show how much I despise the Windows operating system.
But back on track, after a while, the terminal becomes less of a "hindrance" and more of a tool. Yes, there are times where using the file manager is faster than using the terminal but that depends on from who's point of view, whether or not you can touch type, how fast you type, and how many things you actually keep on your computer. When clutter collects and you need to sort it, a wild card [or asterisk(*)] to get all of your image files into your pictures folder is always a good thing. Want to run programs in the background? Throw a little bit of ampersand(&) spice up in there! The possibilities are limitless, and once you learn commands like sed and grep, you'll be well on your way to proficiency.
1. Self-Sufficiency is a good thing. To be self-sufficient is a big part of being independent and is a greater step towards grown and personal, mental, enrichment. Though there is happiness in ignorance, if that is what you wanted then you should have stayed with Windows, or OSX and just not have even bothered coming this far. It's like going to get water, filling up the buckets, only to walk half way and leave the buckets behind. It just doesn't make sense and isn't the way things were meant to be done. There are commands for a reason, sure there are a lot to memorize, but the only way you're going to do that is by doing it. Not complaining about the difficulty of the feat, not whining about a lack of skill, and certainly not by whining to others about problems that occurred and acting like it is their problem that something on your system broke and you weren't competent enough to fix it.
No comments:
Post a Comment